The Color of Sound

Though the caves in Batoidea Island regulate their own temperatures they still drop a few degrees at night. It is how Pierce is able to tell the difference between night and day down here. Gray. That’s how he remembers the rain. When it beats upon the earth it creates a kind of static in his ears that is an all-encompassing gray. Outside, even on a cloudy day, he is able to feel the warmth of the sun on his face or the soft glow of the moon. And then there is the barometric pressure. It changes, even in the caves, bringing an influx of moisture that he can smell from miles away when there is a storm. He can smell it, intermingled with the damp, moldy air of the system and hear it change how Karmen breathes poisonous flowers, exhaling a deep purple from where she sleeps on the bedroll near his.

He knows he isn’t remembering this accurately, but after nearly nine months of blindness the colors all become pastel and begin to fade from memory, being shunted out by his brain as unneeded in the place of spatial recognition. Sometimes he plays games like this, associating color with sound so that they don’t fade completely. He had forgotten the warmth of yellow, the glaring contrast of blood, but he remembered the hopeful olive tones of Karmen’s tired face. The deep woodsy brown of her nearly black hair and how the artificial light glinted off it. It seems strange to him that the first thing he wanted to remember about sight would be the color brown.

The rain had started about thirty minutes ago. He heard the first raindrops hit on the gardens two levels above them and trickle down the cave’s halls in tinkling white. Movement is always white. So when Karmen hyperventilates ragged purple into the air and rolls towards him, the white movement of her desperate hand stops inches above his chest. He can feel the warmth of it there, but it withdraws. Nails lightly scraping palm as her fingers curl inward and rest against her own chest. 

She’d woken herself upright before she made contact, too afraid to agitate his wounds to allow herself to cling to him in fear. He hears the flutter of her eyelashes as she blinks, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The slight shift of her ears as she listens to the sound of his breathing. She settles for gently grasping a lock of his hair, just a slight connection to remind herself that he’s still there in the darkness. She doesn’t pull, but the slight movement tickles his scalp and sends a pleasant chill down his spine.

“Bad dream?” he asks. It’s not what he wants to say. He wants to tell her that it’s ok to cling if she’s scared, that she won’t hurt him as much as she’s afraid she will. But that’s not Karmen. She hates feeling vulnerable and can’t stand the thought of causing him any more discomfort. He meets her in the middle and reaches out a hand. She trades it for the hair readily.

“Sometimes my unconscious mind makes me think that this past month never happened,” she says softly. The places her hand touch his are a golden glow and full of life. He knows that’s not the right visual, but it’s the image in his head. “Why are you awake?”

“It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re blind,” he says. He decides to be honest with her. Maybe if he shows vulnerability she’ll allow herself to open up as well. “And when I close my eyes I’m back in the basement.” Sockets. Whatever. It’s a figure of speech. 

Sometimes he can hear air flowing around where his eyes should be. It’s an annoying shade of orange. Sometimes he wonders what Ikaika did with them. Always after he tells himself that it doesn’t matter. They’d been thrown away, fed to something, or saved as some sort of trophy. It doesn’t change the fact that he’ll never see again. 

Sometimes he wonders if things would have come out different if he had broken. If he had wept and begged and whimpered like a child instead of defiantly meditating through the torture. But no. He knew Ikaika too well. He would have gone looking for more ways to hurt him without killing him to prolong his psychotic enjoyment. Or he would have found Pierce annoying and killed him. 

He’d seen it all. Being Ikaika’s adopted daughter, Karmen had seen more.  She knew the hand that had done this to him, even if it was never turned on her. He bears her hidden pain in his skin, all the suffering she isn’t able to put into words. He’d kept her from this harm as Bartholomew had asked. To do this he would endure much more. It isn’t something he himself understands and he doesn’t expect her to. Deep down he feels Bartholomew would be able to name the bond between them. He can feel it in the golden light linking their hands now.

Karmen takes a moment to adjust her hand in order to hold his more comfortably. He wonders if she can feel the gold. “I guess the cave doesn’t help. We can make other arrangements if you need it,” she says.

“I don’t mind the cave. The air here is clean and I find the company more tolerable.”

She chuckles, a lavender sound. “If only Winston would stop making you try on three outfits a day you may just find us all rather pleasant.”

“Sometimes I think he has me there to keep me from straining my stitches. At least he only had to measure me once,” he says in agreement, thinking of the old family tailor who had helped with their second escape plan. “I don’t think I’d be allowed to leave his workroom otherwise. You’d have to come break me out again.” He softly squeezes her hand and she returns the gesture. “Thanks again for that. And for taking care of me while I recover. I know it hasn’t been easy for you.”

“I’m here because I want to be, same as you,” she says. “I’ve known you my whole life. I plan to tear down my parent’s whole business empire to ensure you can live the lives you choose. This is the life I’ve chosen.”

Careful of his wounds, Pierce rolls towards her, wishing now more than ever that he could see her. He does his best to pull up the last happy image of her he can remember. Something other than that stormy night years ago when he’d last seen her with his own two eyes. When he’d been captured while helping her escape with Bartholomew. “If you don’t slow down you won’t need me as a bodyguard anymore.”

“You really are an idiot,” she says softly. “Just because I can protect myself now doesn’t mean I don’t need you. Do you know how hard those two years were without you? I was scared all the time. I almost died on multiple occasions. And I had no one to talk about Bartholomew with. You didn’t see him, Pierce. I’m not sure he can even be classified as living anymore. I think we’re losing him.” She curls into his hand, pressing her forehead against it. Gold. “It breaks my heart.”

Pierce takes a deep breath, feeling the fear pour out of her. She’d told him this before and neither of them had been able to figure out a way to help him, much less reverse what had already been done. There was more tubing and wires and machinery than a man when she’d last seen him. He wonders what his old teacher would say back then if he knew that he would sacrifice himself so that the two of them could live. 

Bartholomew would probably say it was up to him to protect those he cares about how he chooses. As the man who kept Karmen from growing up like her adoptive parents, he always made sure that they lived freer lives than he did. He gave up so much for them, and now it seems like there might not be any way to pay him back except to continue living, making the most of what they have left. 

“Do you remember me telling you about the years I spent with Bartholomew before he entrusted me as your bodyguard?” He feels Karmen nod against his hand. “My parents had been killed in a battle between revolutionaries and corrupt Navy officers working for one of the ruling powers in the North Sea.” Remembering is ambered and fuzzy. He thinks he blocked out most of his life up to that point. He doesn’t remember names or faces, the kingdoms or officers involved, not even those of his parents or his own surname. By the time he met Bartholomew, he was just Pierce. 

“My house had been destroyed in the battle and I had been living in the rubble for a week when Bartholomew found me. He’d come as soon as he’d been given the report on the battle. It had been a total massacre with few survivors. He took me and three other people off the island. The others had somewhere to go, but I only had the army. Bartholomew personally trained me for two years straight. He’s a guarded man, but when he would leave to visit you he would tell me about it. I felt like your friend before we even met. Then when I was eight he set me as your bodyguard. One day I asked him why he’d asked me to do it. It was obvious that he cared about you, but we were both kids. I was told that you needed a friend more than you needed a bodyguard. I just happened to fill both roles.”

“It seems kind of messed up when you think about it,” Karmen says. “Sending a child to guard a child from monsters like Ikaika. It’s no wonder you got beat black and blue the first time someone tried to kidnap me. I mean, I guess he had Godwin there too, but he had to play by double standards to be an effective spy.”

“My point is,” Pierce continues, “is that Bartholomew understood that he couldn’t take care of us all the time. He trained us and prepared us to take care of each other and ourselves. We lost Godwin, and we may be losing Bartholomew, but he wouldn’t compromise himself if he didn’t believe we could survive without him. In his own guarded way, I think he’s telling us that we’re ready to handle things on our own. Losing people sucks, especially someone as important as them, but we have the resources to take care of ourselves if that should happen.”

“I suppose you could be right,” she says, rolling over to look at the ceiling in a trailing white. “But what if I don’t want to?”

“Then you’ve got us,” he says. “Me, Winston, and Dr. Saaresto. And then there’s the information web. They’re always reliable. Then there’s Winston’s six brothers and-”

“Ok, ok, I get it,” Karmen laughs. “I couldn’t ask for better support. Or better friends. I’m really happy to have you back.”  

“I’m glad you came back. I’ll take a cave any day.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s not too cliché or anything? We really can build you a house. Winston stole some jewels that he was polishing. I’ve made a few black market contacts who are practically begging us for them.”  

“I mean, seriously, you may have to be my bodyguard while I go train.” 

“You are not allowed to train until you’ve healed.”

“You’ve made that apparent. Dr. Saaresto made that apparent. You know, it’s not much different than being in chains sometimes. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without someone making sure I haven’t reopened my wounds.” He can hear the purple of his own words. He feels Karmen squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry, Mistress. I don’t mean to complain. I know it is for my own good and I have to take care of myself before I protect others.” He says this as if he’s heard it a hundred times before. Twenty-five at least. He sighs, plum fading into peach. “If it is your will, I will honor it. It is just that I’ve been able to do nothing for two years straight. I’m tired of doing nothing.”

“I’ve given you something to do,” Karmen says. “How has your study of Braille been going?”

“You know how it’s going,” he groans. “So far I’ve got dot dot dot, half-dot, dot dot. And did I mention dot dot dot?” He sighs again, closing his sockets in exhaustion. “I’m sorry, Mistress. It’s a wonderful resource and I’ll get it eventually, but right now everything feels the same.” 

Braille dots are another shade of orange. Lighter than the air flowing through his sockets but more present, especially when a sheet of it is casually slid toward him every time he sits down. Sometimes he’d like to just enjoy the act of sitting. Sitting is green, like a lawn stretching out with rolling hills and spring flowers. The points of contact of cloth to a surface creates a cushioning sound that is simply green. When you’ve spent two years chained to a wall, the simple act of sitting is heavenly. Maybe that’s why he finds braille so annoying, even though the thought of being able to read again elates him to no end. 

Having Karmen read poetry in the meantime isn’t bad, though. Her voice is a velvety red, inviting and soft to the touch. “When I do learn to read braille, will you still read to me from time to time?”

“Anything but poetry,” she says with a slight groan. “Maybe you can have one day a month where I read you poetry, but just one. I mean that.”

Pierce chuckles. “I can tell you’ve had your fill and accept your terms.” He yawns. “We should get some sleep. Winston will be back at it in a few hours.”

“It’s his form of physical therapy. He must think you’re doing better, considering that he only made you try on one outfit today. Or he’s running out of fabric.” Pierce grunts in response. She grows quiet and he expects her to release his hand and turn her back to him for the night. “Do you mind if… if I hold your hand until I fall asleep?” she asks. “I haven’t slept well during storms since that night. It would help.”

“Of course.” 

She closes her eyes in a flutter of white. Her exhalations of purple slow and her ivory heartbeat steadies.

The sound of sleep: pale blue, like rain should be.